The media are working overtime not just to prevent the eminently qualified Brett Kavanaugh from being confirmed to the Supreme Court, but to destroy his life as well. One of their avenues is to make it impossible for him to coach girls’ basketball in the future.

USA Today’s Erik Brady wrote:

The U.S. Senate may yet confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, but he should stay off basketball courts for now when kids are around…

The nation is deeply divided. Sometimes it feels like we don’t agree on anything anymore. But credibly accused sex offenders should not coach youth basketball, girls or boys, without deeper investigation. Can’t we all agree on that?

The article, which was illustrated with a picture of Kavanaugh and one of the girls’ basketball teams he coaches, has since been dramatically revised. Apparently editors at USA Today realized that calling a human being a pedophile with precisely zero actual evidence of any sexual impropriety was indefensible.

“This is disgraceful,” wrote Jedediah Bila. “The man was accused of atrocities with no evidence, no corroboration, no proof. He’s undergone 6 FBI investigations in his life. Maybe wait to criminalize someone till you have damn good reason? I’m utterly disgusted.”

But the media and other partisans have been setting out to destroy this aspect of the man’s life for a while.

Time magazine’s Molly Ball wrote what one critic called “possibly the most revolting innuendo yet in the Kavanaugh story, and that’s a high bar.”

Ball claimed the line about “legs bare in their private-school skirts” was not meant to say anything other than “the accusation complicates his aggressively pro-woman presentation. Nothing else was intended.” We should take her at her word, but what does it say that not a single editor or other adult at the publication realized how nightmarishly awful this line would come off?

It is apparently impossible for our media to realize that promulgating nothing more than decades-old hearsay with precisely no corroborating evidence is unbecoming and cruel. At the announcement of his Supreme Court nomination, Kavanaugh emphasized how coaching basketball helped create bonds with his daughters.

“I have two spirited daughters. … Margaret loves sports and she loves to read. Liza loves sports and she loves to talk. I have tried to create bonds with my daughters like my dad created with me. For the past 7 years I have coached my daughters’ basketball teams. The girls on the team call me Coach K,” Kavanaugh said during his July 9 speech, making a joke about famous “Coach K” Mike Krzyzewski, the Duke men’s basketball coach.

By all accounts, Kavanaugh is a devoted husband and father to his daughters. And he loves coaching basketball. “All the girls are awesome,” he said at his confirmation hearing. “I know that confidence on the basketball court translates into confidence elsewhere in life.”

It is beyond obvious that the media are willing to throw out any and all standards to defeat Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. It is absolutely soul-crushing and heartbreaking to realize that they are willing to destroy him as a husband and father to achieve that goal. Have they any decency?

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway